


in sickness and in health

by animalker



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-13 22:24:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5719192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animalker/pseuds/animalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are enough, she had believed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in sickness and in health

**Author's Note:**

> written for this prompt by an anon: _Okay but like, even if Sebastian wasn't romanced by Hawke, if Hawke was left in the fade, can you just imagine how upset he'd be? His friend, who helped him when no one else would, who was with him thick and thin, lost in the fade? And it would be even worse if Hawke WAS with Sebastian romantically, because then it’s not just his friend, because they are friends for sure, but also the love of his life, like can you just imagine?_ [(tumblr version)](http://inquisiitor.tumblr.com/post/127562954539/okay-but-like-even-if-sebastian-wasnt-romanced)

When Sebastian returned to Starkhaven as part of the Chantry, one of the first things he did was have graves for his family erected in the gardens surrounding their deserted summer estate, with the rest of his ancestors. He wasn’t the Prince, but he was still a Vael, and since enough of the nobles supported his request it went through. Elthina’s grave was in the Chantry yard instead. He didn’t visit them often, because being Chantry advisor to the throne came with a great deal of work. He’d forgotten just how sharp politics often was in his time with Hawke in Kirkwall, whose approach to bureaucracy was to hit it really hard. 

Despite her very Ferelden approach to politics, she was beautiful. She always had been. She was sturdy, reliable and solid- his anchor and his foundation, whose supported never wavered throughout the years. He’d fallen in love with that first. Around her, he was enough. He wasn’t Prince Vael or Brother Sebastian, even though she never discounted those parts of him. He was simply Sebastian, right from the start, when they hadn’t even known each other. Him in the courtyard, the woman from the weekly mass who’d always worn armour to the services watching him loose an arrow out of boiling red rage, blinded with grief. She’d never told him why, but Sebastian was convinced she’d wanted to help him because she knew that belly deep, throat-choking fury too. She’d looked into his writhing, gasping vulnerability that was too hard to hide and loved him. 

_You_ are enough, she had believed. 

Had. 

He is beginning to form a habit of not having bodies to burn and ashes to mourn. He keeps Varric’s letter, Maker knows why, but he never looks at it. Mostly, he reads her letters with Apollo by his feet, his fur white and legs stiff, the correspondences they sent over the years when they were apart. They detail the funny and the heartbreaking stories, but hardly ever the dangerous- she always saved those for when she was back with him. Her last had been sent before Adamant, and she tells him of a phoenix in the Western Approach who’d been convinced a warden named Alistair had been a female of his species, and the gut-wrenching dereliction of Crestwood with the hordes of the undead rising from the lake. She doesn't tell him about the task that lay before her, the blood rituals, the actions of the Wardens, in a bid to save him pain when she couldn't soothe it in person. 

_I love you_ , she’d written to close, words firm and clear, _I love you, and I always will. Be safe._

Fenris was the first to come to Starkhaven in the months that followed and he stayed the longest. Bethany was days behind him. She hardly spoke to them, just sat out in the gardens near the graves, weariness in every line of her body. Aveline was next, who brought one of the pups from one of Apollo’s litters, although she was hardly small anymore and a proud member of the Kirkwall guard. Merrill and Isabela arrived together; Merrill left a bouquet of freshly picked flowers on the grave and cried a lot, and Isabela vandalised the Amell crest over one of the Chantry sunburst flags. Varric was last, as he had always been with their relationship, and he only came after the the far away war Hawke had died for had been won. They bought each other too many drinks, got each other home, and he left the next morning when Sebastian still had alcohol on his tongue, sharp and sour. 

He should’ve gone with her. Protected her, although he doesn’t know how. Maybe his bow would’ve been enough. Maybe he alone would've been enough, to shield her for a change, to use his own body to block the final blow. Maybe that’s all it would’ve taken to save her. At the least, he could’ve died with her instead of outliving her. It seems everywhere he turns he finds something to remind him of her kind eyes and soft smiles. Every time he finds something of Hawke’s- once even a cloth she used to clean her sword- it sends a wave of grief and guilt and sharp, stabbing pain through him, as clean as an arrow. He still prays, he still works to oversee the Chantry’s political connection to the crown, and yet now there is nothing but an empty home to return to, a cold bed, an old mabari who doesn’t stop waiting by the door until long into the night, and a chest of weapons, trinkets and things he will never be able to throw away. 

_Til death to us part_ , he’d said at the altar, and she’d squeezed his hands, eyes shining with love. It will be his death, not hers, that will part her from his heart in the end.


End file.
